Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.2.4 (10.4)

Greek text · Lake, LCL 25:30

ἡ δὲ πάλιν ἐπελάβετό μου τῆς χειρὸς καὶ ἐγείρει με καὶ καθίζει ἐπὶ τὸ συμψέλιον ἐξ εὐωνύμων· ἐκαθέζετο δὲ καὶ αὐτὴ ἐκ δεξιῶν. καὶ ἐπάρασα ῥάβδον τινὰ λαμπρὰν λέγει μοι· Βλέπεις μέγα πρᾶγμα; λέγω αὐτῇ· Κυρία, οὐδὲν βλέπω. λέγει μοι· Σύ, ἰδού, οὐχ ὁρᾷς κατέναντί σου πύργον μέγαν οἰκοδομούμενον ἐπὶ ὑδάτων λίθοις τετραγώνοις λαμπροῖς;

English · Claude translation

And again she took me by the hand and raised me up and seated me on the couch on the left; and she herself sat on the right. And raising a shining rod, she said to me, “Do you see a great thing?” I said to her, “Lady, I see nothing.” She said to me, “Look: do you not see in front of you a great tower being built upon the waters with shining square stones?”

About this passage

Source

Lake, LCL 25:30 · Kirsopp Lake, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, LCL 25 (London: Heinemann; New York: Macmillan, 1913), 6–71 · Greek text: K. Lake, The Apostolic Fathers (LCL, 1912-1913), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library and published by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Lake, LCL 25. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-26 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Lake (LCL 25, 1913); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Notes

Translation notes

The tower is the church (3.3.3); the vision of the tower is developed at length in Similitude 9.

Cite this passage

Herm. Vis. 3.2.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-vis/3/2/4/).

Plain text

Herm. Vis. 3.2.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/herm-vis/3/2/4/).